convalescents balanced themselves on the rail, shivering in their
pajamas, and pointed one way. The transport was moving swiftly and
smoothly through water as flat as a lake, and making a great noise
with her steam-whistle. The noise was echoed by many more
steam-whistles; and the ghosts of out-bound ships and tugs and
excursion steamers ran past her out of the mist and disappeared,
saluting joyously. All of the excursion steamers had a heavy list to
the side nearest the transport, and the ghosts on them crowded to
that rail and waved handkerchiefs and cheered. The fog lifted
suddenly, and between the iron rails the Lieutenant saw high green
hills on either side of a great harbor. Houses and trees and
thousands of masts swept past like a panorama; and beyond was a
mirage of three cities, with curling smoke-wreaths, and sky-reaching
buildings, and a great swinging bridge, and a giant statue of woman
waving a welcome home.
The Lieutenant surveyed the spectacle with cynical disbelief. He was
far too wise and far too cunning to be bewitched by it. In his heart
he pitied the men about him, who laughed wildly, and shouted, and
climbed recklessly to the rails and ratlines. He had been deceived
too often not to know that it was not real. He knew from cruel
experience that in a few moments the tall buildings would crumble
away, the thousands of columns of white smoke that flashed like snow
in the sun, the busy, shrieking tug-boats, and the great statue
would vanish into the sea, leaving it gray and bare. He closed his
eyes and shut the vision out. It was so beautiful that it tempted
him: but he would not be mocked, and he buried his face in his
hands. They were carrying the farce too far, he thought. It was
really too absurd; for now they were at a wharf which was so real
that, had he not known by previous suffering, he would have been
utterly deceived by it. And there were great crowds of smiling,
cheering people, and a waiting guard of honor in fresh uniforms, and
rows of police pushing the people this way and that; and these men
about him were taking it all quite seriously and making ready to
disembark, carrying their blanket-rolls and rifles with them.
A band was playing joyously, and the man in the next cot, who was
being lifted to a stretcher, said, “There’s the Governor and his
staff; that’s him in the high hat.” It was really very well done.
The Custom-house and the Elevated Railroad and Castle Garden were as
like to life as a photograph, and the crowd was as well handled as a
mob in a play. His heart ached for it so that he could not bear the
pain, and he turned his back on it. It was cruel to keep it up so
long. His keeper lifted him in his arms, and pulled him into a dirty
uniform which had belonged, apparently, to a much larger man—a man
who had been killed probably, for there were dark-brown marks of
blood on the tunic and breeches. When he tried to stand on his feet,
Castle Garden and the Battery disappeared in a black cloud of night,
just as he knew they would; but when he opened his eyes from the
stretcher, they had returned again. It was a most remarkably vivid
vision. They kept it up so well. Now the young Doctor and the
hospital steward were pretending to carry him down a gangplank and
into an open space; and he saw quite close to him a long line of
policemen, and behind them thousands of faces, some of them women’s
faces—women who pointed at him and then shook their heads and cried,
and pressed their hands to their cheeks, still looking at him. He
wondered why they cried. He did not know them, nor did they know
him. No one knew him; these people were only ghosts.
There was a quick parting in the crowd. A man he had once known
shoved two of the policemen to one side, and he heard a girl’s voice
speaking his name, like a sob; and She came running out across the
open space and fell on her knees beside the stretcher, and bent down
over him, and he was clasped in two young, firm arms.
“Of course it is not real, of course it is not She,” he assured
himself. “Because She would not do such a thing. Before all these
people She would not do it.”
But he trembled and his heart throbbed so cruelly that he could not
bear the pain.
She was pretending to cry.
“They wired us you had started for Tampa on the hospital ship,” She
was saying, “and Aunt and I went all the way there before we heard
you had been sent North. We have been on the cars a week. That is
why I missed you. Do you understand? It was not my fault. I tried to
come. Indeed, I tried to come.”
She turned her head and looked up fearfully at the young Doctor.
“Tell me, why does he look at me like that?” she asked. “He doesn’t
know me. Is he very ill? Tell me the truth.” She drew in her breath
quickly. “Of course you will tell me the truth.”
When she asked the question he felt her arms draw tight about his
shoulders. It was as though she was holding him to herself, and from
someone who had reached out for him. In his trouble he turned to his
old friend and keeper. His voice was hoarse and very low.
“Is this the same young lady who was on the transport—the one you
used to drive away?”
In his embarrassment, the hospital steward blushed under his tan,
and stammered.
“Of course it’s the same young lady,” the Doctor answered, briskly.
“And I won’t let them drive her away.” He turned to her, smiling
gravely. “I think his condition has ceased to be dangerous, Madam,”
he said.
People who, in a former existence, had been his friends, and Her
brother, gathered about his stretcher and bore him through the crowd
and lifted him into a carriage filled with cushions, among which he
sank lower and lower. Then She sat beside him, and he heard Her
brother say to the coachman, “Home, and drive slowly and keep on the
asphalt.”
The carriage moved forward, and She put her arm about him, and his
head fell on her shoulder, and neither of them spoke. The vision had
lasted so long now that he was torn with the joy that after all it
might be real. But he could not bear the awakening if it were not,
so he raised his head fearfully and looked up into the beautiful
eyes above him. His brows were knit, and he struggled with a great
doubt and an awful joy.
“Dearest,” he said, “is it real?”
“Is it real?” she repeated.
Even as a dream, it was so wonderfully beautiful that he was
satisfied if it could only continue so, if but for a little while.
“Do you think,” he begged again, trembling, “that it is going to
last much longer?”
She smiled, and bending her head slowly, kissed him.
“It is going to last—always,” she said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A SOURCE OF IRRITATION
By STACY AUMONIER
TO look at old Sam Gates you would never suspect him of having
nerves. His sixty-nine years of close application to the needs of
the soil had given him a certain earthy stolidity. To observe him
hoeing, or thinning out a broad field of turnips, hardly attracted
one’s attention, he seemed so much part and parcel of the whole
scheme. He blended into the soil like a glorified swede.
Nevertheless, the half-dozen people who claimed his acquaintance
knew him to be a man who suffered from little moods of irritability.
And on this glorious morning a little incident annoyed him
unreasonably. It concerned his niece, Aggie. She was a plump girl
with clear, blue eyes, and a face as round and inexpressive as the
dumplings for which the county was famous. She came slowly across
the long sweep of the downland and, putting down the bundle wrapped
in a red handkerchief which contained his breakfast and dinner, she
said:
“Well, Uncle, is there any noos?”
Now, this may not appear to the casual reader to be a remark likely
to cause irritation, but it affected old Sam Gates as a very silly
and unnecessary question. It was, moreover, the constant repetition
of it which was beginning to anger him. He met his niece twice a
day. In the morning she brought his bundle of food at seven, and
when he passed his sister’s cottage on the way home to tea at five
she was invariably hanging about the gate, and she always said in
the same voice:
“Well, Uncle, is there any noos?”
Noos! What noos should there be? For sixty-nine years he had never
lived farther than five miles from Halvesham. For nearly sixty of
those years he had bent his back above the soil. There were, indeed,
historic occasions. Once, for instance, when he had married Annie
Hachet. And there was the birth of his daughter. There was also a
famous occasion when he had visited London. Once he had been to a
flower-show at Market Roughborough. He either went or didn’t go to
church on Sundays. He had had many interesting chats with Mr. James
at the Cowman, and three years ago had sold a pig to Mrs. Way. But
he couldn’t always have interesting noos of this sort up his sleeve.
Didn’t the silly zany know that for the last three weeks he had been
hoeing and thinning out turnips for Mr. Hodge on this very same
field? What noos could there be?
He blinked at his niece, and didn’t answer. She undid the parcel and
said:
“Mrs. Goping’s fowl got out again last night.”
“Ah,” he replied in a non-committal manner and began to munch his
bread and bacon. His niece picked up the handkerchief and, humming
to herself, walked back across the field.
It was a glorious morning, and a white sea mist added to the promise
of a hot day. He sat there munching, thinking of nothing in
particular, but gradually subsiding into a mood of placid content.
He noticed the back of Aggie disappear in the distance. It was a
mile to the cottage and a mile and a half to Halvesham. Silly
things, girls. They were all alike. One had to make allowances. He
dismissed her from his thoughts, and took a long swig of tea out of
a bottle. Insects buzzed lazily. He tapped his pocket to assure
himself that his pouch of shag was there, and then he continued
munching. When he had finished, he lighted his pipe and stretched
himself comfortably. He looked along the line of turnips he had
thinned and then across the adjoining field of swedes. Silver
streaks appeared on the sea below the mist. In some dim way he felt
happy in his solitude amidst this sweeping immensity of earth and
sea and sky.
And then something else came to irritate him: it was one of “these
dratted airyplanes.” “Airyplanes” were his pet aversion. He could
find nothing to be said in their favor. Nasty, noisy, disfiguring
things that seared the heavens and made the earth dangerous. And
every day there seemed to be more and more of them. Of course “this
old war” was responsible for a lot of them, he knew. The war was a
“plaguy noosance.” They were short-handed on the farm, beer and
tobacco were dear, and Mrs. Steven’s nephew had been and got wounded
in the foot.
He turned his attention once more to the turnips; but an “airyplane”
has an annoying genius for gripping one’s attention. When it appears
on the scene, however much we dislike it, it has a way of taking the
stage-center. We cannot help constantly looking at it. And so it was
with old Sam Gates. He spat on his hands and blinked up at the sky.
And suddenly the aëroplane behaved in a very extraordinary manner.
It was well over the sea when it seemed to lurch drunkenly and
skimmed the water. Then it shot up at a dangerous angle and
zigzagged. It started to go farther out, and then turned and made
for the land. The engines were making a curious grating noise. It
rose once more, and then suddenly dived downward, and came plump
down right in the middle of Mr. Hodge’s field of swedes.
And then, as if not content with this desecration, it ran along the
ground, ripping and tearing up twenty-five yards of good swedes, and
then came to a stop.
Old Sam Gates was in a terrible state. The aëroplane was more than a
hundred yards away, but he waved his arms and called out:
“Hi, you there, you mustn’t land in they swedes! They’re Mister
Hodge’s.”
The instant the aëroplane stopped, a man leaped out and gazed
quickly round. He glanced at Sam Gates, and seemed uncertain whether
to address him or whether to concentrate his attention on the
flying-machine. The latter arrangement appeared to be his ultimate
decision. He dived under the engine and became frantically busy. Sam
had never seen any one work with such furious energy; but all the
same it was not to be tolerated. It was disgraceful. Sam started out
across the field, almost hurrying in his indignation. When he
appeared within earshot of the aviator he cried out again:
“Hi! you mustn’t rest your old airyplane here! You’ve kicked up all
Mr. Hodge’s swedes. A noice thing you’ve done!”
He was within five yards when suddenly the aviator turned and
covered him with a revolver! And speaking in a sharp, staccato
voice, he said:
“Old Grandfather, you must sit down. I am very much occupied. If you
interfere or attempt to go away, I shoot you. So!”
Sam gazed at the horrid, glittering little barrel and gasped. Well,
he never! To be threatened with murder when you’re doing your duty
in your employer’s private property! But, still, perhaps the man was
mad. A man must be more or less mad to go up in one of those crazy
things. And life was very sweet on that summer morning despite
sixty-nine years. He sat down among the swedes.
The aviator was so busy with his cranks and machinery that he hardly
deigned to pay him any attention except to keep the revolver handy.
He worked feverishly, and Sam sat watching him. At the end of ten
minutes he appeared to have solved his troubles with the machine,
but he still seemed very scared. He kept on glancing round and out
to sea. When his repairs were complete he straightened his back and
wiped the perspiration from his brow. He was apparently on the point
of springing back into the machine and going off when a sudden mood
of facetiousness, caused by relief from the strain he had endured,
came to him. He turned to old Sam and smiled, at the same time
remarking:
“Well, old Grandfather, and now we shall be all right, isn’t it?”
He came close up to Sam, and then suddenly started back.
“_Gott!_” he cried, “Paul Jouperts!”
Bewildered, Sam gazed at him, and the madman started talking to him
in some foreign tongue. Sam shook his head.
“You no roight,” he remarked, “to come bargin’ through they swedes
of Mr. Hodge’s.”
And then the aviator behaved in a most peculiar manner. He came up
and examined Sam’s face very closely, and gave a sudden tug at his
beard and hair, as if to see whether they were real or false.
“What is your name, old man?” he said.
“Sam Gates.”
The aviator muttered some words that sounded something like “mare
vudish,” and then turned to his machine. He appeared to be dazed and
in a great state of doubt. He fumbled with some cranks, but kept
glancing at old Sam. At last he got into the car and strapped
himself in. Then he stopped, and sat there deep in thought. At last
he suddenly unstrapped himself and sprang out again and, approaching
Sam, said very deliberately:
“Old Grandfather, I shall require you to accompany me.”
Sam gasped.
“Eh?” he said. “What be talkin’ about? ’Company? I got these ’ere
loines o’ turnips—I be already behoind—”
The disgusting little revolver once more flashed before his eyes.
“There must be no discussion,” came the voice. “It is necessary that
you mount the seat of the car without delay. Otherwise I shoot you
like the dog you are. So!”
Old Sam was hale and hearty. He had no desire to die so
ignominiously. The pleasant smell of the Norfolk downland was in his
nostrils; his foot was on his native heath. He mounted the seat of
the car, contenting himself with a mutter:
“Well, that be a noice thing, I must say! Flyin’ about the country
with all they turnips on’y half thinned!”
He found himself strapped in. The aviator was in a fever of anxiety
to get away. The engines made a ghastly splutter and noise. The
thing started running along the ground. Suddenly it shot upward,
giving the swedes a last contemptuous kick. At twenty minutes to
eight that morning old Sam found himself being borne right up above
his fields and out to sea! His breath came quickly. He was a little
frightened.
“God forgive me!” he murmured.
The thing was so fantastic and sudden that his mind could not grasp
it. He only felt in some vague way that he was going to die, and he
struggled to attune his mind to the change. He offered up a mild
prayer to God, Who, he felt, must be very near, somewhere up in
these clouds. Automatically he thought of the vicar at Halvesham,
and a certain sense of comfort came to him at the reflection that on
the previous day he had taken a “cooking of runner beans” to God’s
representative in that village. He felt calmer after that, but the
horrid machine seemed to go higher and higher. He could not turn in
his seat and he could see nothing but sea and sky. Of course the man
was mad, mad as a March hare. Of what earthly use could _he_ be to
any one? Besides, he had talked pure gibberish, and called him Paul
something, when he had already told him that his name was Sam. The
thing would fall down into the sea soon, and they would both be
drowned. Well, well, he had almost reached three-score years and
ten. He was protected by a screen, but it seemed very cold. What on
earth would Mr. Hodge say? There was no one left to work the land
but a fool of a boy named Billy Whitehead at Dene’s Cross. On, on,
on they went at a furious pace. His thoughts danced disconnectedly
from incidents of his youth, conversations with the vicar, hearty
meals in the open, a frock his sister wore on the day of the
postman’s wedding, the drone of a psalm, the illness of some ewes
belonging to Mr. Hodge. Everything seemed to be moving very rapidly,
upsetting his sense of time. He felt outraged, and yet at moments
there was something entrancing in the wild experience. He seemed to
be living at an incredible pace. Perhaps he was really dead and on
his way to the kingdom of God. Perhaps this was the way they took
people.
After some indefinite period he suddenly caught sight of a long
strip of land. Was this a foreign country, or were they returning?
He had by this time lost all feeling of fear. He became interested
and almost disappointed. The “airyplane” was not such a fool as it
looked. It was very wonderful to be right up in the sky like this.
His dreams were suddenly disturbed by a fearful noise. He thought
the machine was blown to pieces. It dived and ducked through the
air, and things were bursting all round it and making an awful din,
and then it went up higher and higher. After a while these noises
ceased, and he felt the machine gliding downward. They were really
right above solid land—trees, fields, streams, and white villages.
Down, down, down they glided. This was a foreign country. There were
straight avenues of poplars and canals. This was not Halvesham. He
felt the thing glide gently and bump into a field. Some men ran
forward and approached them, and the mad aviator called out to them.
They were mostly fat men in gray uniforms, and they all spoke this
foreign gibberish. Some one came and unstrapped him. He was very
stiff and could hardly move. An exceptionally gross-looking man
punched him in the ribs and roared with laughter. They all stood
round and laughed at him, while the mad aviator talked to them and
kept pointing at him. Then he said:
“Old Grandfather, you must come with me.”
He was led to an iron-roofed building and shut in a little room.
There were guards outside with fixed bayonets. After a while the mad
aviator appeared again, accompanied by two soldiers. He beckoned him
to follow. They marched through a quadrangle and entered another
building. They went straight into an office where a very
important-looking man, covered with medals, sat in an easy-chair.
There was a lot of saluting and clicking of heels. The aviator
pointed at Sam and said something, and the man with the medals
started at sight of him, and then came up and spoke to him in
English.
“What is your name? Where do you come from? Your age? The name and
birthplace of your parents?”
He seemed intensely interested, and also pulled his hair and beard
to see if they came off. So well and naturally did he and the
aviator speak English that after a voluble examination they drew
apart, and continued the conversation in that language. And the
extraordinary conversation was of this nature:
“It is a most remarkable resemblance,” said the man with medals.
“_Unglaublich!_ But what do you want me to do with him, Hausemann?”
“The idea came to me suddenly, Excellency,” replied the aviator,
“and you may consider it worthless. It is just this. The resemblance
is so amazing. Paul Jouperts has given us more valuable information
than any one at present in our service, and the English know that.
There is an award of five thousand francs on his head. Twice they
have captured him, and each time he escaped. All the company
commanders and their staff have his photograph. He is a serious
thorn in their flesh.”
“Well?” replied the man with the medals.
The aviator whispered confidentially:
“Suppose, your Excellency, that they found the dead body of Paul
Jouperts?”
“Well?” replied the big man.
“My suggestion is this. To-morrow, as you know, the English are
attacking Hill 701, which for tactical reasons we have decided to
evacuate. If after the attack they find the dead body of Paul
Jouperts in, say, the second lines, they will take no further
trouble in the matter. You know their lack of thoroughness. Pardon
me, I was two years at Oxford University. And consequently Paul
Jouperts will be able to prosecute his labors undisturbed.”
The man with the medals twirled his mustache and looked thoughtfully
at his colleague.
“Where is Paul at the moment?” he asked.
“He is acting as a gardener at the Convent of St. Eloise, at
Mailleton-en-haut, which, as you know, is one hundred meters from
the headquarters of the British central army staff.”
The man with the medals took two or three rapid turns up and down
the room, then he said:
“Your plan is excellent, Hausemann. The only point of difficulty is
that the attack started this morning.”
“This morning?” exclaimed the other.
“Yes; the English attacked unexpectedly at dawn. We have already
evacuated the first line. We shall evacuate the second line at
eleven-fifty. It is now ten-fifteen. There may be just time.”
He looked suddenly at old Sam in the way that a butcher might look
at a prize heifer at an agricultural show and remarked casually:
“Yes, it is a remarkable resemblance. It seems a pity not to—do
something with it.”
Then, speaking in German, he added:
“It is worth trying. And if it succeeds, the higher authorities
shall hear of your lucky accident and inspiration, Herr Hausemann.
Instruct _Ober-lieutenant_ Schultz to send the old fool by two
orderlies to the east extremity of Trench 38. Keep him there till
the order of evacuation is given, then shoot him, but don’t
disfigure him, and lay him out face upward.”
The aviator saluted and withdrew, accompanied by his victim. Old Sam
had not understood the latter part of the conversation, and he did
not catch quite all that was said in English; but he felt that
somehow things were not becoming too promising, and it was time to
assert himself. So he remarked when they got outside:
“Now, look ’ee ’ere, Mister, when am I goin’ to get back to my
turnips?”
And the aviator replied, with a pleasant smile:
“Do not be disturbed, old Grandfather. You shall get back to the
soil quite soon.”
In a few moments he found himself in a large gray car, accompanied
by four soldiers. The aviator left him. The country was barren and
horrible, full of great pits and rents, and he could hear the roar
of artillery and the shriek of shells. Overhead, aëroplanes were
buzzing angrily. He seemed to be suddenly transported from the
kingdom of God to the pit of darkness. He wondered whether the vicar
had enjoyed the runner beans. He could not imagine runner beans
growing here; runner beans, aye, or anything else. If this was a
foreign country, give him dear old England!
_Gr-r-r! bang!_ Something exploded just at the rear of the car. The
soldiers ducked, and one of them pushed him in the stomach and
swore.
“An ugly-looking lout,” he thought. “If I wor twenty years younger,
I’d give him a punch in the eye that ’u’d make him sit up.”